It honestly genuinely upset me, and I never get like that. It was just so wrong.

I know what you mean. I think that's another example why I wont mind when Moffat hands over to someone else. the story was sound but then he adds another layer that takes it from good into overcooked.

for me The character of Missy was near perfection her script was just brilliant so menacing scary and downright insane. Then he goes and does something like that with the brigadier.

I can only restate my theory that one of the priorities for the two parter was as a tribute to the armed forces (albeit so badly done its passed everyone by). Therefore, as unpleasant as the treatment of the Brigadier was, it cannot be seen as a misdirected 'add-on' but rather something that stands or falls on its own merits.

Maybe the Nethersphere captured her consciousness like it did all the other people who died and she knows how to download it into a new body?


I stand corrected. I haven't watched Star Trek in a loooong time

I guess the lack of plausibility is more down to the scale of the change and the numbers involved than of the process itself. That, and the lack of logic in needing the corpses in the first place. Although I suppose the fact that Missy is clearly quite mad might excuse a certain lack of logic


Given that Missy has been collecting dead consciousnesses from both the past and the future, she could have gone back that far and scooped up Adric if she'd wanted. There wouldn't be a corpse left to animate but then there wouldn't have been for the future ones either. Never did get the point of collecting the dead from the future if the idea was to put them back in their bodies in the 'present'

I went and looked it up after I posted that and it seems that while the Nanoprobes did the initial conversion to a Borg and created Borg circuitry within the Host they still needed to graft on things like weapons.

So we both remembered correctly (if only partially).


Missy could have no doubt created an army of Cybermen that didn't need any organic parts but the threat of her turning the entire human race (starting with the dead and going on to the living) into Cybermen was the one she wanted the Doctor to face.

This was part of her investigation into what she believed the Doctor needs:

MISSY:You know, I've been up and down your timeline, meeting all those silly people who died to keep you alive. And you know what I worked out? What you really need.

They were not taken to Missy's Edwardian Tea Shop and Gardens to be put back in thier bodies, merely to provide Missy with the ideas for her plan to 'turn' The Doctor...

Interesting. So the idea is that the Nethersphere was created just to follow the Doctor along his timeline and collect people who had died for him so that they could be interrogated and provide Missy with ideas for how to get back on his good side and persuade him that they were alike?

She decided that he needed people to die to protect him in order for him to feel appreciated and came up with an idea of creating an army of Cybermen built around the corpses of his beloved humans and populated with their dead consciousnesses. On the assumption that this would make him like her again.

She really has lost it, hasn't she?

I mean, if she hadn't been zapped it would definitely have been time for the old straight jacket

Any idea why she selected Clara for him? Apparently she chose a control freak because he doesn't like being controlled. Was she trying to help him or hinder him?

Watching it again - the Doctor was very ineffectual at the end -

He let Clara turn on Danny's cyber-program , he failed to stop Missy (she just handed him the control bracelet ) , and the Brig 'killed' her before him .

I am really struggling to understand the negativity surrounding the use of the Brigadier. From what I am reading people found it uncomfortable, distasteful and so on. To me, it was an incredible tribute and people seem to be internalising the issue as if it is about them and not him.

If he knew that his character had been used within the series finale as a tribute, had saved his daughter, resisted the cybermen and dealt with the master......do I believe he would be insulted or honoured.......

Why complicate it?

He was ineffectual for pretty much the entire episode! He was made president of Earth but didn't come up with a single useful idea other than to guard the Graveyards (for all the good that would do).

He should have known how slippery the Master was and taken far better care that Missy was properly secured.

He should have been in the TARDIS researching ways to neutralise the cloud or hi-jacking and neutralizing the Nethersphere (TimeLord tech, after all)

When the plane was being attacked he should have led an immediate evacuation into the TARDIS.

The only useful thing he did in the entire episode was rescue himself from falling and handing Clara the sonic screwdriver so that she could turn off Danny's emotions

The Doctor did two things: told people to watch the graveyards and threw the bracelet towards Danny (although the Doctor could've got the cybermen to blow themselves up anyway). I'm not even sure Clara needed the screwdriver as she seemed to think pressing buttons would solve the problem with the inhibitor.

It's almost as if Moffat hates the Doctor. Really weird.

that scene had me groan with disbelief , I know its a given that the master will escape somehow , but at least make it difficult , they didn't even check her for devices . Plus - isn't the master supposed to have hypno powers ? I really thought they'd gag him to be careful .

on the upside I did love how Gomez played that scene , she kinda saved it from its sinking stupidity .

Yes, plus the girl was incredibly stupid too. I mean, if a prisoner asks you to come over to them so they can whisper in your ear, your first reaction is going to be to stay as far away as possible and ask the guards to check that she's still secured. That's even without her saying she's about to kill you!

At the very least the guards should have been drawing weapons and covering her.

I think that's been part of the problem this whole season. The Doctor has been ineffectual. I'm not sure whether this has been by design or not, but I feel that it's hampered Capaldi's portrayal in a big way.
Given a decent script, Capaldi could be a brilliant Doctor - unfortunately, he hasn't had one yet.

I've been watching the stories this season and quite liking them, but haven't been blown away by any of them and haven't been able to put my finger on why. I think that your post illustrates one of the reasons for me.

The doctor showing his anger at gallifrey's no show was a great scene as was the I'm an idiot passing by bit. Missy was fantastic and I wish she was in the episode more, the character really grabs your attention and was very entertaining.

Unfortunately the episode fell flat for me. The Cybermen weren't very interesting and the whole water creating them from corpses thing just didn't work for me as I found it to ridiculous, and that's a personal thing I think we all have a line with what we are willing to go with, and usually I'm very good at going with things but for me this series has pushed over the line several times (moon/egg, tree world...although I was fine with 2d creatures haha). The Cyberman banging on the plane door was cool though as was the scenes of them rising up from the graves.

Clara seemed lost amongst everything which is odd since her story was an important part of the episode, yet her part just didn't fire up much interest and was rather forgettable. The character stood out far more in other episodes such as deep breath, listen, orient, flatline, robin.

The same goes for Danny. I didn't mind Danny in the series, he wasn't the most exciting character but nothing bad, however I thought he was at his best in his first two appearances (dalek/listen) and then slowly burned out a little, then come Death in Heaven the character felt flat and his part (like clara) didn't hold much interest or work.

The café seen and the goodbye brought some weight, the scenes were suitably frustrating as they lied to each other, a good end to the lying theme.

Santa paying a visit doesn't work for me and unnecessarily stamped on the down beat ending, it felt tacked on and jarred with the tone of the episode.

dyspepsia, diarrhea...

i wonder if its designed to be that this Dr is not the hero character who with a few shouts of 'run' and uses of the screwdriver will save everything nice and easily like we've seen for a while and in some ways is perhaps a bit sick and tired of saving earth every time but does it because he feels he must not because he wants

The RTD template was sound stories that had a beginning, middle and end which all made sense, simple and effective arcs which also were fully explained and made sense, mixed with characters that envoked emotion and which were 3 dimensional and were well developed without ever having to take any unnecessary time away from any one episode to do it. The point being, the RTD template was and is fine, it's how Moffat has twisted and mangled it beyond recognition that is the problem.

Well I think the first two Missy kidnaps (Half face and future soldier girl) were her info gathering and the Nethersphere and Seb came later when she had decided to create the false afterlife. As for her decision to create an army using Cybertech and humans, the point behind it seemed to be that The Doctor already commands an army, it just fights in small individual separate battles. In her mind it makes him just like her, but The Doctor couldn't see it. So bring home the reality of what he does and who he is and they can both 'run together' again. God knows really...

As for Clara, lovely looking girl. Let's leave it at that,eh?

Possibly, but because he's not been at the heart of the action pretty much throughout many of the stories, I feel that the whole series has been slightly disappointing. I think that my favourite story of the season was Mummy on the Orient Express, which had the Doctor in a central plot role solving the problems. As the Doctor should.

I should qualify that to say that I've actually enjoyed most of the stories, but have just felt that there's been something slightly missing throughout. I dunno, maybe it'll come together better next season.

I think it's by design, he's a different man from the Day of the Doctor despite it only being a short time for the viewers it's actually a massive amount of time and experience for the Doctor.

800 years of life in Christmas has changed him and it should have. He's lived in one place for longer than he has anywhere in his life and while he protected the people there he was aware of getting old on his last regeneration and needing to train people to take up the fight.

Late to the table again.
Like most of the two part series finales the second part wasn't as good as the first, but I thoroughly enjoyed it anyway, "CyberBrig" and all!
Obviously I can't possibly know for sure, but I'd like to believe that Nicholas Courtney would have loved the idea, and the resurrected Brigadier saving his daughter from certain death was a good way to sign off the character.
I loved the outrageous conceit of swapping the Doctor/companion roles in the opening titles, must have had more than a few people wondering that perhaps Clara was the Doctor all along!
Not so sure about interrupting the end titles though, that didn't work as well IMO.
Once the end titles start, the audience should be permanently out of the drama, and suddenly dragging them in again jarred badly for me.
Of course, I fully agree that Michelle Gomez was absolutely fantastic, and it will be an absolute crime if we don't see her again!

Yeah. Like how the Doctor jumped from a spaceship, crashed through a domed glass roof and didn't die, right there and then from his injuries in The End of Time? Since when did he learn to fall from a great height and not die?

Or how apparently otherwise sane, rational people chose to stay in the same traffic jam for decades?

Yeah, pure perfection, the RTD era.

The point is, all eras can be dissected in this way, if you're so inclined.

Since he fell from a considerably lesser height when he was 4, and had to regenerate?

I daresay after that he took care to learn new falling-and-surviving techniques. Possibly from the Venusians.

Was Osgood going to become a companion? Is that why Missy went out of her way to kill her?

The Doctor muttered something about "all of time and space" when he finished talking with Osgood and I thought I caught a smile from Osgood after he said that, as well as a reaction from Missy. Perhaps the Doctor was eyeing Osgood as companion material and this is why Missy decided to make a big deal out of killing her?